TY - JOUR T1 - Episiotomy or perineal tears: compared with catgut, synthetic sutures reduce risk of short-term pain and need for resuturing; rapidly absorbing sutures comparable to synthetic but reduce the need for suture removal JF - Evidence Based Nursing JO - Evid Based Nurs DO - 10.1136/ebn1110 SP - ebnurs1110 AU - Ruwan Fernando Y1 - 2010/09/01 UR - http://ebn.bmj.com/content/early/2010/09/24/ebn1110.abstract N2 - Commentary on: Kettle C, Dowswell T, Ismail KM. Absorbable suture materials for primary repair of episiotomy and second degree tears. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2010;6:CD000006. Perineal trauma (either perineal tear or episiotomy) is reported to occur in over 60% of women following spontaneous vaginal delivery.1 Complications of perineal trauma following childbirth include haemorrhage, haematoma and abscess formation, perineal pain and discomfort, fistula formation, dyspareunia and anal incontinence. In addition, there has been an increase in litigation related to the complications of perineal trauma following childbirth.2 In this context, the Cochrane review by Kettle and colleagues provides the current best evidence with regards to the use of different suture material for the repair of episiotomy and second-degree perineal tears. The authors carried out a comprehensive literature review, searching both electronic databases and hand-searching 30 journals and proceedings of major conferences. Methodological quality of the trials with regards to random allocation … ER -